Cutting Green Peppers
By Kelly Crull
I met a wise man once. He taught me how to cut up a green pepper during an AA meeting. I was in New Jersey staying at a Lutheran church with a group of students from my college, and I was helping out at the Christian school. It was my night to cook supper, which I assured the others in my group would make for a memorable evening, and I was in the kitchen with a kettle of water boiling on the stove. I had this green pepper on the counter and realized I didn’t know how to cut it up. I insulted myself several times for not having watched more Iron Chef episodes and studied the rubbery green vegetable closely, hoping somehow its secret would be revealed to me.
I was standing there with the knife when this man walked in and asked if I was looking for the AA meeting next door. I told him no, I was just trying to make spaghetti. He walked to the sink and washed his hands, watching me curiously, probably wondering why someone would just stand over a green pepper and do nothing. Once his hands were dried off, he looked at me again and pointed at the vegetable on the counter. “Do you want me to show you how to cut up that green pepper?” he asked. All I could do was smile shyly.
He joined me at the counter and circled his finger around the top of the pepper. “Cut around the stem and pull out the core,” he said. “Now slice the pepper in half, shake out the seeds, and cut the halves into strips.” He watched patiently as I carried out the procedure. “That’s it. Congratulations,” he said, smiling.
Believe it or not, the Bible doesn't say anything about cutting up green peppers. I even checked my concordance. Actually, just between you and me, I don't think Jesus was even much of a cook. As far as I can tell, he usually just showed up for food. But regardless of Jesus' culinary skills, the point is the Bible doesn't tell us everything. There's no words about playing badminton or sketching a beach or identifying a glow worm. The Bible can't even tell us the square root of nine. And you know what? I think God is perfectly fine with what the Bible doesn't say. I think He says the Bible is sufficient in its gospel message. The rest of what we need to know, I think He says, is in the world around us.
God gives us people. He gives us people who know how to think, to believe, to imagine, and to love. His words are stamped like tattoos on every one of us. Stamped in ink at the bottom of business memos and written in marker on classroom white boards, God words are given to us by people, who know how His world works.
I found it fitting, as I scooped the pieces of pepper into a pile and dumped them into my spaghetti sauce, to stop for a moment and thank God for people, for the man in khakis from the AA meeting.